All Alone in the Night
by ghettopeach
Summary: Rimmer survives the accident that wipes out the Red Dwarf crew. AU.


Rimmer walked out of the captain's room with a smug grin on his face. Old Listy would get his comeuppance now. Hiding a cat on board, against regulations—and in his room no less, never mind that Rimmer was allergic to cats…exactly how reckless could one person get, anyway?

Rimmer sauntered into the room to find Lister frantically overturning furniture and digging through his primordial laundry pile. "Looking for something?" he asked. "Perhaps your lost sense of hygiene?"

"Smeg off," Lister said. "This has nothing to do with you."

"Typical self-centeredness," Rimmer said. "You're destroying all sense of order in my room and it has nothing to do with me?"

"Absolutely nothing," Lister said emphatically.

"It wouldn't have anything to do with the flea-infested cat you hid in our room, would it?"

"No!" Lister turned suddenly. "Wait, you've seen Frankie? Is he all right?"

"He was when I turned him in to Captain Hollister ten minutes ago."

"Come on, man, you didn't!"

Rimmer smirked. "I did."

"He's going to kill Frankie! You know that!" Lister stared plaintively at Rimmer, traces of tears in his eyes.

"I know, isn't it marvelous?" Rimmer's smile broadened. "A clean, efficient solution to the problem of ugly, annoying and troublesome space parasites everywhere. It's a kindness to all involved."

Lister picked up a chair and smashed it to pieces. He turned on Rimmer, brandishing a wooden club, fierce hatred in his eyes. "You are so dead."

"Ah." Rimmer's voice went up an octave. He backed away slowly as Lister pounded the club in his hand. "This is your fault, you know. Regulations—"

Lister whacked a hole in the wall next to Rimmer's head. Pieces of plaster flew out everywhere. Rimmer squeaked out a noise only audible to bats, and fled into the hallway, running much faster than he ever thought his legs could carry him.

He raced through the corridors, careening around the corners and narrowly avoiding skutters and maintenance workers. Lister wasn't too far behind. There had to be somewhere to hide; he couldn't keep running forever.

Of course! The stasis booth on floor sixteen. Lister wouldn't think to look there. Also, today's in-lift movie was _Manos: The Hands of Fate,_ which even Lister's stomach wouldn't be strong enough to handle. Rimmer threw himself into the lift before the door closed.

Four hours later, he emerged on the sixteenth floor. A pair of brutish thugs came up to him. "Arnold Rimmer?"

"No, sorry, you're looking for someone else. Thank you, bye-bye!" Rimmer skidded around the corner and hightailed it to the stasis booth. He could hear them following, their heavy chains clanking periodically against the wall.

There it was! Rimmer jumped into an open booth and set the timer by feel. The booth closed just as the thugs came in. Rimmer sighed in relief, and suddenly he stopped mid-sigh as time and space were suspended around him.

Rimmer exhaled sharply as he felt a rush of cold air. The stasis booth lid opened up, and Rimmer sat upright. He looked at the chronometer to see how much time he had been in stasis.

"Two weeks! The shift supervisor is going to kill me!" He jumped up and ran out of the room, then drew back, remembering the thugs Lister had sent after him. Rimmer stood there, trying to decide which was more frightening: men with arms the size of German Shepherds, or a squinty-eyed shift supervisor with control over latrine duty.

"Hello?" Rimmer called out nervously. He heard no response—in fact, everything was eerily silent. Well, maybe the thugs were gone. In the meantime, he had to get to work.

Rimmer ran through the hallways, but everything seemed dead. No one was there. Only emergency lighting lit the hall; the only sound was Rimmer's labored breathing and the thud of his boots. A fine white powder covered the hallway.

"Arnold." The sound of Holly's voice made Rimmer jump.

"Holly!" Rimmer inhaled deeply and tried to stop his heart from pounding. "Where is everyone?"

"They're gone, Arnold." Holly's face was grave.

"Gone? What do you mean, gone? Gone where?"

"Red Dwarf had an accident. A radioactive breach wiped out the crew."

Rimmer furrowed his eyebrows. "But that's impossible! Sirens would be going off all over the place if that were true."

"I kept you in stasis until the radiation went down," Holly said. "You've been in that booth for over three million years."

"Three million…" Rimmer leaned against the wall for support. He sat up suddenly, smiling. "Oh, I see. This is some sort of joke. All right, I fell for it. You can come out and have your laugh now."

The same eerie silence followed his announcement.

"Arnold," Holly said, "I know you don't want to believe it, but everyone on this ship is dead."

"Even Lister?"

"Lister's dead."

"Thank God. Wait, what about Captain Hollister?"

"Captain Hollister's dead. Everybody's dead, Arnold."

"Everybody? You mean I'm on this ship all by myself?" Rimmer shivered, a sense of claustrophobia enveloping him.

"All alone," Holly confirmed.

"And I've been in stasis for three million years?"

"That's it exactly."

Rimmer looked around, sensing death and emptiness surrounding him. He had always tried not to believe in ghosts, but in the deathly calm, the floors shrouded with white ash and the emergency lighting beckoning into the darkness, there wasn't much else to believe. In that moment, he would have done anything to have even Lister back with him—his solid flab, his stench of sweat, curry and day-old Dutch lager; his off-tune singing and insipid, goofy grin—anything tangible to combat the creepy and ethereal sense of life seeping out into the unforgiving depths of space.

Something else nagged at the corner of his mind—something else he hadn't quite grasped yet. It flickered in and out of the reaches of his understanding. Something about three million years…

Then it hit him with the full force of an emergency stop at faster-than-light speeds. He was the last person alive on the ship, granted. But given the rate of evolution and all the time that had passed…

In all probability, he, Arnold J. Rimmer, was the last living human in the universe.


End file.
